Have you heard about the treasure hunting craze, Geocaching? I stumbled upon it a few months ago when I was planning my exploration unit, but Tony made fun of me when I brought it up, saying it sounded nerdy. People leave these little containers in various locations around the world, share the location coordinates with the online community, then use GPS to locate someone else’s “treasure.” When you find someone’s cache, you leave a little something, sign a book that’s inside, or email someone with an update of who’s been there. There are actually a bunch of caches here on Tortola and some of the surrounding islands.

Well, we had some friends over for dinner last week and were talking about some different hiking trails around the island when they saw the game box for Solar Quest, a favourite game of the Snethen family. It’s actually a pretty fun game, but when Tony starts spouting the name of every moon in the solar system, as well as various other stats about them, well, it starts to seem a bit… nerdy. Matt, a science teacher and avid boardgame player, was intrigued.

And thus, the idea for Nerd Day was born. It was decided that Matt, an experienced Geocacher, would take us to find a cache that he’s found before, and we would end the day with a battle for intergalactic domination.

Word spread, and we had an awesome group assembled for our hike!

Along the way we came across The Bat Cave, though no bats, luckily!

From the “cave” you could climb out onto the giant boulders and peek out at the ocean 100 feet below. It made my legs feel like jello just standing there to take the picture!

The kids (and dog) made great leaders!

As we got closer to the cache though there were more and more cacti, and less and less recognizable path, so Stacy took over as lead.

We never did find what we were looking for. An “impenetrable wall of cacti” blocked our way forward, and we checked the paperwork to realise the last people who found the cache did so 11 months ago. Then again, when this is the what you see along the way, the journey can’t really be called a failure, can it?

Welcome!

Thank you for checking out our blog! I started blogging during our 2 year stint in the British Virgin Islands and found I really enjoy journaling in this way. Now that we've purchased a 125 year old home, we are embarking upon a very different kind of adventure!